Nate Oats Preparing Alabama Basketball for Strenuous SEC Tournament: "Anybody could beat anybody"

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Nobody ever said it was going to be easy.

On Friday, Alabama basketball will begin the final steps toward winning its first SEC Tournament since 1991. After a season that saw the Crimson Tide finish 21-6 and 16-2 in the conference — winning the SEC regular-season title — the team will face off against either Mississippi State or Kentucky in the first round after a double bye through the first two rounds.

Alabama coach Nate Oats, who has seen action in four conference tournament during his time at Buffalo, is well aware of how difficult these final conference games will be.

“Anybody could beat anybody,” Oats said on Wednesday. “It’s still pretty open even though most people if they had to pick I’m guessing they would pick Arkansas as the hottest team in the league. We finished with the one-seed, they finished with the two-seed. We’re going to have to play well to beat anybody.

“Our first game’s not going to be easy no matter which team it is. Our second game’s not going to be easy and then obviously if we’re fortunate enough to get to Sunday that’s going to take everything we’ve got to win that one.”

As head coach at Buffalo, Oats won the MAC title three times. While the MAC Tournament isn’t on as large of a stage as the SEC Tournament, winning it is just as difficult. Conference tournaments are never easy, as you have a selection of teams fighting for better seeding, a selection of bubble teams fighting to earn a bid into March Madness and a remaining few teams that are trying to salvage their season with a conference title.

The Crimson Tide’s motivation is more than that, though. Where it stands right now, Alabama is projected as a No. 2 seed in the upcoming NCAA Tournament. While its standing has a very small chance at being bumped up to a No. 1 seed should some games in the Big Ten Tournament swing in its favor, the Crimson Tide is essentially locked in place as a No. 2 seed. However, seeding is not this team’s motivation.

According to Oats, Alabama basketball’s primary means of motivation is to be playing its best basketball of the season in the coming weeks. If they can do that, then the wins will come.

While many teams coming off of a lackluster season might have the goal of simply making the NCAA Tournament, Oats said that that is not the case with his squad.

“If our only motivation was to make the NCAA Tournament at the beginning of the year then we achieved it because we’re in and we can relax and lose in the first round,” Oats said. “I’ve never made it a point in coaching to say ‘Our goal this year is to win this number of games.’ No, our goal is to be playing as close as we can to our full potential come the end of the season as we possibly can be. So, our goal right now is to be playing the best basketball that we’ve ever played all year. If we’re playing the best basketball we’ve played all year, we’re winning those games.

“To me it’s how you frame what you’re trying to do from the first practice through the end and we never said ‘Ok, we need to make the NCAA Tournament this year.’ We all assumed if we did was we were supposed to be doing that we would make it. I was under that assumption the whole time.”

As mentioned earlier, the Crimson Tide is seeking its first SEC Tournament title since 1991. This season has seen a lot of streaks being broken by Alabama. First it was winning at Tennessee, then sweeping Kentucky, then winning its first regular-season title since 2002 before sweeping Auburn. All of those were the first occurrences of those feats in quite some time for this Alabama team.

With the SEC Tournament on the horizon, the Crimson Tide has one last streak to break before it reaches the Big Dance: to win a conference tournament championship.

“We won the regular season, I’d love to win the tournament championship,” Oats said. “If we play well and the shots drop then we will. We could play a really good game, we just don’t make shots and lose — I would be alright with that as long as we give a championship-level effort, which is what we really got to get out of our guys. If we’re giving that, we just gotta be thinking now playing our best basketball.

“That’s what we’re looking for. I think our guys are mature. I think they understand it.”